There were parts of what I described that were brutally difficult. Particularly, we would receive a certain $ amount to purchase books (that were frequently $500+ dollars per semester). However, the office that doled this fund out would frequently be weeks behind, or your scheduled disbursement just wouldn’t show up. Then you’d have to find multiple hours out of your work week to go down to the financial aid office to wait in line for hours in an office that was only open 10am-2pm. Or sometimes the complete scam of a bank/card they forced you to use had some issue.

So, frequently, you wouldnt even be able to purchase books without a loan or extending credit til 1-2 months into the semester. by that time you could be having midterms and tons of assignment with no textbooks. I would frequently have to beg other students to let me photocopy sections of their books so I could do the assignments. Or resort to pirating.

To them that’s “working as intended” I guess. no amount of complaining ever got anywhere.

And given how much (light) abuse I know about in personal circles, and how some people think they deserve everything they can claim, strict rules are likely a rather good idea.

> some people think they deserve everything they can claim

If they are able to claim something doesn't it stand to reason that we think they deserve it? I am confused how you'd measure your qualification for welfare without using the qualification metrics.

At the end of the day welfare in the US extremely stingy even if you manage to max it out - it can be a struggle to survive in a lot of areas due to a lack of CoL adjustments.

A program strict enough to ensure that absolutely zero people get it who "shouldn't" is also a program strict enough that many of the people who should get it don't. Not because they don't meet the criteria, but because the bureaucracy around vetting people is sufficiently hard to navigate.